"When we acquire a knowledge, we preserve it on the report until we need it. With the Internet, our report has expanded and everyone has immediate access to it. It's an impressive advance. So said Ernest Sosa, professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, at the University of Navarra. Rutgers University (USA), one of the most important in the world in this field discipline. Sosa gave today the II ICS Lecture on Humanities and Social Sciences of Institute for Culture and Society (ICS).

The Rutgers University philosopher noted that while the report is now available at network, "self-confidence is also necessary, in the skill self to preserve the knowledge that has been acquired."

For Professor Sosa, the human knowledge must be guided by "humility": "Sometimes, human beings are too proud and do not take into account that although they are rational, they are also fallible. He should not be arrogant or hasty, especially when there is an important decision at stake, since his mistakes can be costly".

Asked about the abundance of messages that insist that the brain deceives us, Ernest Sosa referred to man's confidence in his ability to know: "I think it is exaggerated. The fact that there are factors that exert a certain influence does not mean that they are determinant for our behavior".

knowledge reflective

From agreement with Professor Sosa, thanks to the reflective knowledge , which is the human being's own, "we transcend our animal nature and take perspective on our being and our way of living and relating to each other. From it we can do something as sophisticated as contemporary science".

As Aristotle said," he added, "human beings are rational beings. This implies taking into account reasons to guide us in the appropriate conduct. Reasons are acquired through knowledge and deliberation allows us to discern which factors are relevant and what weight they should have in a decision". And he insisted that knowledge does not consist of a mere belief: "Its quality depends on the quality of the instructions on which it is based".

Ernest Sosa, Ph.D., at Philosophy, was a professor at teaching and research at Brown University from 1964 until 2007, when he joined Rutgers University. He has also taught at the following universities: Western Ontario, Harvard, Mexico, Miami, Michigan, Salamanca and Texas. And he has been a visiting researcher at Oxford and the Australian National University.

He has chaired the American association of Philosophy and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also publisher of the philosophical journals Noûs and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. In 2005 he delivered the prestigious 'John Locke Lectures' at Oxford University.

The ICS lectures are a series of conferences that the Institute for Culture and Society, the research center at Humanities and social sciences of the University of Navarra, (ICS) organizes on an annual basis. goal These lectures are given by internationally renowned researchers, and their purpose is to present relevant topics of research.